Imagine yourself on vacation, taking it all in and relaxing while making the most of your time away from work and the real world. After taking an excellent shot using your recently bought SupraUltraMax camera that is powered by an 18 megapixel lens, you are now all too excited to share it with everyone back home.

To email the pictures, you scoured that foreign country for an internet cafe desperately looking for a place to get your pics onto the computer so that you can send them to friends to show them what a great time you’re having. You attached your camera’s memory card on your rented computer and you found out how amazing your camera’s storage is – the file size of the pictures are enormous.

You can’t possibly email home images amounting to twenty seven megabytes. With the computers in the internet cafe you went to without any photo editor, there’s no way you can resize the pictures. So would sharing the photos mean you have to return home first?

Not really.

With today’s broadband technology, there are a number of websites that offers uploading and editing of pictures online.

Considered as one of the best in online editing, Phixr has a wide array of available tools such as Red Eye removal and Sepia conversion. It also has OCR recognition as well as the tool called Borders.

Phixr also allows the editing of pictures online and transfer it to other sites in a jiffy. This is because it has a go-between agreement with Costco, Flickr, Live Journal and other websites of such nature.

But it is important to note that Phixr does not keep the pictures for longer periods of time. Since it’s not really meant for storage, the pictures, get removed three hours after editing is over.

Meanwhile, there’s PXN8 (pronounced as Pixenate and yes, it’s seems like a license plate). It’s Bookmarklet feature makes immediate loading of images possible. In just two mouse clicks, you can upload and open an image using PXN8.

One of the reasons why PXN8 is getting good reviews is because of its multiple features and functions. Hence, workflow becomes fast and easy.

Meanwhile, a site named Pixoh is the one that provides the largest limits when it comes to file size. In fact, you can edit pictures as much as 10 megabytes with Pixoh. That’s why among online photo editors, it is considered to be one the best interfaces. The only drawback is that it can only tender limited features like rotation and resizing.

With the growth of digital cameras, digital photo editing is being embraced by home enthusiasts who have been gripped by the digital bug. In the past, photo restoration services have attempted to restore ripped and torn images to their former pristine glory. Thanks to the advancements in digital technology, modern manipulation and storage capability no longer requires third party intervention. Software has now taken over as the photo editing tool of choice.

Gone are the days where sophisticated software was the domain of professional photographers and the graphic designer. With the growth of the internet, online tutorials, educational services and streaming media presentations provide the ability for anyone with the desire to learn to acquire the skills in a minimum amount of time.

Whether you want to repurpose existing photos, remove blemishes, reduce redness, compile a slideshow or export the finished production to a range of media friendly formats, photo editing software can help you to achieve your goals. With such a diverse range of options, securing software doesn’t have to be costly. In fact, you can get free software by downloading it from the internet. In most cases, the help files are self explanatory and you can bring yourself up to speed in no time.

Online photo editors also provide versatility to edit images on the move. You can upload images to the net, repurpose and distribute via email. For enthusiasts who want to share with family and friends, online photo galleries provide the means to do so. Google picasa and photobucket are popular websites that provide a range of digital editing and sharing solutions.

The advancements in photo editing software also provide the ability to create professional grade DVD presentations for personal or commercial use. Burning images to DVD for storage purposes or displaying them as a DVD or slideshow is a quick and convenient way to store and display images. With advancements in printer capability, printing out your own images, either straight from the digital camera or after software repurposing is now a practical reality.

The trend in digital camera use is set to continue and digital photo editing is set to grow in importance as more people discover how easy photo manipulation has become.

For anyone who loves taking pictures, it’s worth while getting acquainted with photo editing software as they can make a big difference with how your pictures turn out. Image editing software to a digital photographer is what the dark room is to a film photographer. The big benefit of photo editing software is that it’s easier to do than setting up a darkroom.

Plus, with photo editing software you can do both standard image editing, such as cropping and adjusting color, and with the right software, you can also try your hand at photo manipulation.

Image editing refers to all changes that are made to a photograph. Photo manipulation refers to what film shutterbugs used to call “trick photography” – switching backgrounds and such. (For some fun examples of photo manipulation, look up the “National Geographic Photo Foolery” page online.)

Before you choose a photo editor, you first want to understand the type of image editing you want to do. In this article, we will highlight the most popular types of photo editing software so you can understand the differences between each of them.

Picasa:

Google’s free photo editor. If you are just starting to learn the digital photography basics, then this will serve you well for a while. It is really designed to be more of an online photo album or photo manager but can also handle basic photo editing. Picasa offers basic editing tools such as retouch, which helps you remove blemishes, scratches, etc. Like most editors it has red eye removal. It also has fun applications like creating screensavers with your photos and integration with Google Earth.

If you’re ready to advance from digital photography basics and do more with your images, consider one of the other photo editors.

Adobe Photoshop Elements:

The market leader in photo editing and manipulation, it’s more user-friendly and less costly (approximately $90) than its big brother, Photoshop CS4. It’s good for the photography enthusiast plus there is a free trial version.

Adobe Photoshop CS4:

This has everything you could possibly need as a professional photographer or graphic artist. It sells for about $700 on their website, but you can find it half that price by some vendors or look for a free trial version.

Paint Shop Pro:

This is a close competitor to Photoshop Elements and also runs about $90. They also offer a 30 day free trial.

The GIMP:

An odd name for such a powerful program, the acronym stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. This photo editor is open source (aka freeware) and continues to improve and has a good community of users if you need help. It is available for Windows (NT4, 2000/XP/Vista), Mac Operating Systems (OS X) and even Unix/Linux platforms. It doesn’t quite have everything that you get with Adobe Photoshop CS4, but it has more than Elements or Paint Shop Pro and is used by some professionals.

No matter what photo editor you have, read through the guide or help sections so you understand what you can do with it. It takes time to learn but you will be impressed with what you can do with your images. For example, here are a just a few of the things you can accomplish (the top 5 even with just Picasa):

Crop

Resize

Lighten or darken shadows, highlights, and midtones

Correct Colors

Remove blemishes, a stray branch, a logo, or anything else you don’t want in the picture

You can also create all sorts of special effects with a photo editor. For example you can turn your photo into an impressionistic painting. You can also convert a color picture into a black and white image to better capture the tones and highlights. Or for a more vintage or antique look, you can choose sepia.

Even if you don’t care about special effects, learning the basics of even the most basic photo editor will allow you to fix mistakes made in photographing. Just cropping alone can do wonders if you couldn’t get a close enough shot or you’ve got too much clutter in the picture. That is why photo editing is an important part of learning the digital photography basics and why it’s important that you learn it. Before long, you will be editing and producing quality photographs that you will be proud to hang on your wall.

Making good photos requires lots of skills, professional cameras, perfect weather conditions and most importantly a good photo editor software. If you visit news websites, popular online photo galleries or even view a photo magazine, you will notice that their images are of the highest quality, professional and are really good looking. How do you think they achieved this? After taking photos with their cameras, these photographers use professional and cutting-edge photo software to retouch their images.

There are hundreds of photo editor software available on the market. While many of them are available free of charge, you will need to purchase a license for the most professional ones. Choosing the perfect photo software can be a difficult task especially if you are new to photo editing. Which software to buy will also depend on the level of editing you want to achieve. If your photos are going to be used online or in magazines then a professional software will be required else if it is just for personal use, a free or low cost software will be the best choice.

I’m sure before you purchase a product online you look for reviews and testimonials from other users. That’s a great idea! You should do the same before selecting a photo editor software. Most software authors provide a list of their software’s features on their website. This makes it easy for you to compare the features of several photo software to see which one will best suit your needs. There are also several photography blogs and forums from where you can find reviews and testimonials from other users.

If you are going to purchase a commercial software then it might be a good idea to download a trial version first. Most commercial photo editor software come with a 30 day trial or limited amount of use. This gives you ample time to try all the features of the software and also make sure that it can run on your computer. You will also be able to see if the photo software meets all your requirements.

There are some basic features that you need to look for in a photo editor software. You should be able to level or rotate your images, crop, resize, remove red eye, sharpen, remove noise, adjust color, saturation, brightness, contrast and add special effects to your photos. Moreover the software should have an easy to use and friendly user interface. An accompanying documentation on how to use the software will be a plus for you. There are endless options of photo manipulation software but before selecting one, make sure you compare their prices and features offered. And most importantly, make sure the photo software meets your requirements!